


Hard Times Are Ahead

by Demenior



Series: Jaegermorphs [2]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-22 00:25:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demenior/pseuds/Demenior
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of character-focused chapters dealing with events/lives before the main storyline of Jaegermorphs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard Times Are Ahead

**Author's Note:**

> So in my Pacific Rim research I discovered that there is a specific Jaeger Academy that any potential Rangers go to- which negates everything I do about being rasied/trained on-base. So in this AU the Jaeger Academy was destroyed and so the remaining Shatterdomes/HQ’s have their own training program that’s kinda half-assed and everyone goes through until the pilots are picked up for REAL training otherwise they just end up in the military. 
> 
> Note: Rachel is around 5 at the start of the story, and is 8-9ish when she and Jake meet.
> 
> Warnings: There is some sexual themes around Jake n Rachel while they are still underage. ((spoilers- there is no actual sex, but they do consider it and they are also given safe-sex talks))

Rachel was young when the monster attacked—too young to understand that dead meant forever and that daddy wasn’t going to come get her from the park like he said he would. Everything was in ruins, though she could still find her way home. Her house was mostly together, enough that she felt safe, and she made sure to lock the door behind herself. Since mommy wasn’t around she took the cookies from the pantry and hid under her bed until all the gunfire stopped and the strangers left.

Rachel waited a two years before she saw another human up close again.

 

Military scouts found her, hiding alone in the remains of what had been a nice suburban neighbourhood. She’d grown good at scavenging, and had learned to catch the rabbits and rats that raced through the area. Her fingers were curled in the shape of her knifes handle and she hadn’t spoken a vocal word in so long she could hardly remember how.

As it was, they startled her and her first response was to attack anyone who snuck up on her. She’d stabbed one of them and broken the nose of another before a tall man was able to pin her and get her knife away. They dragged her back to their base where she was left to people poking and prodding at her, marveling that she’d survived so long alone. With the constant movement of populations it was next to impossible to track down one family missing a little girl (those were dime a dosen) and no one really knew what to do with Rachel.

The soldier that had pinned her came back once she was cleared for contamination and had calmed down a bit. He handed back her knife.

“You’re a survivor, aren’t you sweetheart?” he said, slowly. She stared at the patterns his mouth made and tried to remember what the sounds meant.

“Ya,” she finally managed.

He knelt at her level. She could have taken his eye out if she wanted, “My name is Desmond Hamee.” That was a lot of sounds and she made a face, so he tapped his chest and said, “some people call me Dak. Dak.”

That was an easy sound. She could do that, “Dak.”

He grinned and it was the first time someone had smiled for Rachel in years and she couldn’t help but grin as well.

Carefully she reached out to touch his nose, “Dak,” she said again, and then thumped her chest, “Rachel.”

 

Dak and his wife Aldrea—who Rachel called Dee even after she had learned to speak again—made sure Rachel was well looked after. Aldrea worked in sciences, while Dak mostly did grunt work around the base. Their son was in the Jaeger training program, hoping to be paired with a potential copilot of his own. Rachel didn’t see him much, and trusted him even less. She had a hard time trusting anyone bigger than her, which happened to be just about everyone.

Dak helped teach her some hand-to-hand combat and when she started getting good enough to make him sweat, Aldrea decided to teach her how to use weapons as well. It was Aldrea who encouraged Rachel to do the Ranger Compatibility Test, as she firmly believed in the renewal of the Jaeger program.

Rachel’s scores came back high all around, especially in the solo simulator. This was all supposed to be a good thing, but Rachel feared the day she might be taken away from Dak and Dee. For the most part though, she was informed that she was unlikely to find a copilot based on her unique neural signature. That was one good thing to come out of it.

Things remained normal—Rachel ran messages and helped clean the mess hall, and in the afternoon she would have classes with other orphans who had decided to enroll in training. She drew on the scrap paper Aldrea was able to provide at night, and listened to Dak tell stories with all the different voices he could manage.

Of course, nothing good lasts. They found someone likely to be compatible with Rachel.

 

His name was David and from the minute Rachel saw him she knew he was no good. There was a streak of mischief in her, a wildness in her heart that could never be tamed, but his was malicious in intent and it made her uneasy.

They had to spar, as part of their bonding regime, and things got dangerous fast. For starters—David was _not_ on her level. She beat him easily nearly every time, until he started getting aggressive and instead of miming the blow, actually struck her across the shoulders.  

They had to move to the Rangers quarters, thin walls between copilots so that David could shout obscene things at her and Rachel slid her knife against the metal sidings of the bed until the wee hours of the morning and they were too tired to admit they both fell asleep.

As all Ranger candidates were required to, they had to do _everything_ together. It was a constant battle of Rachel looking over her shoulder to be sure David wasn’t going to humiliate her or hurt her, and trying to beat David to the punch (literally) so that she was triumphant. If she hadn’t been so obsessed with beating him, with being _better_ than him, then maybe she might have thought to complain to her superiors. She should have known that their connection was twisted and dark in a way that couldn’t be healthy. But the two of them were partners if only in the amount of lies they told to convince everyone that they were okay.

The first time they were allowed to drift in the simulator, it was _chaos_.

 

David was left a babbling mess, and Rachel took a week before she could remember her name. It was easier re-learning to speak this time, as she’d already done it once before.

Lots of important people came by—no one Rachel bothered to remember. They all wanted to find out why the drift had gone so wrong and why no one had noticed the poison between the two pilots. Rachel doesn’t want to admit her part in the fault but wants this to be done with as soon as possible. She never wants to drift again. Her mind is still in jagged pieces with bits of David still attacking her from the inside.

 

It’s near the end of all this that Eva comes to see her. She says she is designing a new Jaeger and is hoping Rachel might be willing to undergo intense training to be a pilot. Rachel says no, she won’t. She won’t have anyone in her head again, she won’t be vulnerable to anyone hurting her.

Eva asks her to reconsider, because she will be saving the world. As it stands, all Eva needs is just to test Rachel and another boy because they might be highly compatible.

That’s how Rachel meets Jake.

 

Jake is quiet, though not meek, where David was brash and loud. He shakes her hand, looks at Eva and asks if Rachel is an angel. David called her that, once, when they were pretending everything was okay, ‘ _she’s such an angel’_ as he’d pinched her side and forced her to smile through it. He’d meant the exact opposite. Rachel doesn’t trust Jake.

When they’re asked to spar, and Rachel falls into muscle memory and strikes him across the face completely on purpose, he doesn’t hit her back.

Rachel doesn’t trust him and wants to find the things that make him lash out, to prove that they can’t be compatible and she won’t have to drift with him. She doesn’t talk to him for the first three days they know each other, and drops her food on him twice. Jake just seems to take it and it makes Rachel furious that he won’t fight back.

On the fourth day she hits him again during sparring, right in the solar plexus, and he goes down hard. She’s decided he must just be a punching bag who follows orders after all, when he takes her knees out and pins her down.

“What’s your problem? We’re supposed to work together and all you do is fight me!” he shouted at her.

She hooked a leg over his waist, twisted on her hip to pin him, “I don’t trust you!”

Jake’s arms were pushing her up and away from him, and in an unexpected move he dropped her so she crashed onto him, and he wrapped all four limbs around her and didn’t let go even when she bit him.

“Can you give me a chance?” he asked, “tell me what I can do.”

“Stop being such a wuss,” she snapped, “and let me go.”

 

Jake sits down with her at lunch in a quiet nook away from everyone and tells her why he wants to become a Ranger. How he watched his bother get crushed by a Kaiju and the copilot, one of Jake’s friends’ fathers, eaten alive right in front of them.

It surprises her that he’s seen something so horrific. Rachel hasn’t actually seen anyone die before. She’s seen the bodies, but most of them were too mangled to remind her of anything human.

Her need to one-up him causes her to share her story. How she was alone for so long, how Dak and Dee took her in when she had nowhere else to go.

David had laughed, called her a wild girl. Said being alone must have made her crazy and it was a wonder they managed to make her look like a civilized human.

Jake called her brave. They finished their lunch holding hands.

 

Combat the next day is something Rachel never thought possible. It is _beautiful_. She and Jake flow, moving from stance to stance. She’s _not_ trying to hold back on him, but she’s not trying to destroy him, her against the world. They’re working together to create something more.

If this is what being compatible is like then she never wants to be with anyone but Jake ever again.

 

He sneaks into her room that night, and while the knife under the pillow freaks him out a bit, the bed is still plenty wide for them both to fit. There’s a buzz between them, under their skin. Rachel’s happier that Jake is in the room, that she can see and touch him. She’s never felt like this about anyone. It’s the first time, when she wakes up to a nightmare, the touch of another person and not her knife calms her.

 

The adults all nod as they see her and Jake move between classes holding hands, and they smile and point and some of them take notes. They were doing the same when they saw her and David fighting, so Rachel isn’t sure what they think they see. Eva, Rachel noticed, was back. Jake knew her as well. She was Jake’s best friends’ mom.

 

Unfortunately, the day they have to do the test drift comes too soon. The last time Rachel was here her mind was shredded in the worst ways possible. She realized as they make their way down that she doesn’t want Jake in her head because what if he gets hurt? She couldn’t live with herself if she hurt Jake.

Jake refused to let go of her hand until they were forced apart to change into their driver suits. The routine was very familiar—they’d practiced it many times and both she and Jake had done it before, but with other people. One of the scientists said that they were special, and not to worry.

 

The simulation was meant to put you through everything you would experience if you were inside a Jaeger, but without the need for the actual thing. Rachel strapped her feet in, taking the right side, while Jake took the left. It felt right to be sharing a conn-pod with Jake, and she felt a wave of relief at him being within eyesight again.

 

Relay gel flooded the driver suits and Rachel fought off her panic as liquid filled her lungs. The HUD flared to life, presenting a digitized landscape of an imaginary land.

“Our readings are good, how are you two doing?” Eva said over the com link.

“Good,” Jake said.

“I’m fine,” Rachel nodded.

She would hold back anything that wanted to hurt Jake. She would not hurt Jake, she whispered to herself.

Eva’s voice crackled in her ear, “Rachel your stress levels are too elevated. Calm down. I understand that the last time you were here things did not go well—trust in your partner.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Jake said.

“Initiating neural handshake,” Eva says.

Rachel relaxes like she’s been taught, letting her worries slip away. She won’t bring that darkness.

“Ten seconds.”

“Hey, Rachel,” Jake calls, “I hope you’re excited as I am!”

“Five seconds.”

Rachel can’t help but smile, “You’ll see how excited I—”

The drift wraps around her like a hug, and Rachel never wants to be anywhere else.

 

They’re in a partial drift for less than ten minutes. It’s meant only as a gauge for how compatible they will be, without risking their entire minds and they barely scratch the surface of their memories, only getting very recent ones. Rachel and Jake can’t let go of each other afterwards, sharing a hollow gap like a missing limb where they were once together.

Eva kisses them both on the cheek, tells them they were _“incredible_! I’ve never seen such high compatibility scores!”

Some of the scientists openly stare at them, claiming that it has to be a fluke.

“Did you see it?” Rachel asked Jake, because she needs to know out loud, now that they don’t have the drift. She needs to know in this muted, fake world if he saw her for who she truly was.

“The parts… of _him_?” Jake’s mouth twists unsavory, and Rachel knows that is the mouth she makes over David, “yeah. I saw what he left—but you’ve grown over it. It made you stronger.”

 _What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger_ was the last thing Tom coherently said to Jake before leaving to test the Jaeger he was crippled in. Jake was thinking about it just as they went in. Rachel likes that phrase.

She kisses Jake on the cheek and he blushes.

“You actually did think I was an angel,” she laughed, “I think you’re an angel too.”

Jake grins and kisses her cheek in response.

 

They sign up for Eva’s secret project, and are taken with her to a new home, far away from Dak and Dee.

Legally, they cannot fully sync until they are thirteen, but they spend every second they can in the basic simulator. Eva has them living together, eating together, learning together and fighting together. There are a few other pairs, but the regime is so intense there isn’t a lot of time to make friends outside of your own copilot. Not that Jake and Rachel really want to.

When they’re twelve the boys and girls get split up and given a preparatory talk about how sexual embarrassment is the highest cause of breaks in the drift, and they should be prepared for sexual thoughts they might have about their partner—or anyone—and those that their partner might be having.

Rachel never considered the fact that Jake might find her attractive. She’s his angel (and he’s _hers_ ) and they’ve already kissed each other and have slept in the same bed since they met—but that’s just what they do. Jake must have had the same thoughts (of course he did, they share everything) because the next week he buys her flowers and asked her to be his girlfriend.

 

Girlfriend is basically just another term for partner, which is just another term for copilot. Nothing changes between Jake and Rachel except they feel happier and kiss every night before they go to sleep. Mr. Chapman, who is personally in charge of their training, does sit down with them and talk about the risks of having sex and goes through all the details of birth control for both of them. It’s mortifying to talk to Chapman about it, but at the same time both Jake and Rachel get a perverse thrill at the thought that one day they will have sex with one another.

There’s really no rush right now. They have the drift and they have sleeping together every night and the fact that they are merely extensions of one another. Sex seems messy and finite, what they have is safe and familiar and _good_. They have forever with each other; they’ve whispered it in the dark after the lights go out. _I’ll love you forever and always_.

 

When they are finally legal for the drift neither of them can sleep the night before. They end up kissing and pacing until the early hours, and then go to the gym to work off their excess energy. All they’ve been going off of before this has been the smallest taste of a true drift—and already it’s the most perfect thing either of them know because it’s _them_ combined fully, and they can’t imagine how it can get better. Also, Rachel will finally get some details because Jake had some sort of sexual dream about her the other night but won’t tell her what happened.

Eva has come back to watch their first Drift. She’s been watching their entire training, though more often than not she’s updated through Chapman on their progress. Jake and Rachel have been training with the same simulator everyone else uses, but now that they can fully drift they’ll be training with a better replica of the neural sensors that Eva uses in the Jaeger they’re going to pilot.

Getting into their driver suits has become second nature to them, though the walk to the on-site conn-pod feels longer than it should be. Jake’s hand is tight around hers and Rachel can practically feel his excitement.

 

Breathing in the relay gel is second nature, though the initial terror never goes away. It clears in her mask and Rachel moved to lock her feet into the controls. The conn-pod hummed around them, and though it was only a simulation, Rachel felt a surge of excitement at the thought of piloting a _real_ Jaeger with Jake in the near future.

She and Jake turned to glance at each other at the same time, and he grinned at her so widely she could only return the expression.

“Initiating Neural Handshake,” a voice—Erek, Rachel remembers—said in her ear.

She took a deep breath, rolled her shoulders.

“Finally,” she said to Jake.

“Ten seconds.”

“Meet you there,” Jake replied.

“Three seconds.”

Rachel closed her eyes and opened herself to the Drift.

 

They thought they knew what drifting felt like. They were so _wrong_. It’s a song that can only be sung by the two of them, and only they know the words. It rings through their bodies and it brings tears to their eyes because it’s so _beautiful_.

They’re letting themselves settle, getting used to the feeling of one another. Running through each others’ minds and memories, opening up and letting someone else in where no one else ever was. Jake relives her two years of isolation in seconds, Rachel watches Tom crushed in the Jaeger.  They’re racing further and further back, unable to hide their delight at discovering every inch of one another.

They’re at a picnic—maybe a birthday party. The memory is fuzzy around the edges. Jake’s family is there, and Jake is very young. Tom is still walking and smiling and making jokes. He’s joining the military. The faces Rachel is sure are her parents are there. _She’s_ there. She is looking through Jake’s eyes as he looks back through hers. They have the same memory. _How_ do they have the same memory?

It hits them in startling revelation—they’re _related_. They’re _family_.

“Jake, Rachel—your adrenaline’s just spiked. Report,” Eva snaps.

Both of them leap to the memories of their romantic kisses, being told that it’s next to impossible to find a partner you don’t drift with. Whispering in the dark about how they’re going to be married one day and everyone _knows_ they’re dating.

 _We can’t tell anyone_ , they both agree without speaking.

“J-just a surprise,” Rachel reports, “something we didn’t expect to share. We’re okay.”

They both took a deep breath to calm themselves.

“We’re going to start movement, and then we will go onto weapon use. The test will last fifteen minutes. Report any irregularities as they happen,” Eva ordered.

“Yes ma’am,” they replied.


End file.
